Nicholas Pocock's pointing of the closing stages of the action at the battle of Trafalgar. In the distance the French van escapes south-south-west and to the left the French Achille catches fire and explodes.

Above left 12.45 pm: Collingwood's column had already engaged and Nelson broke the line in Victory at the head of his column. Above right 4.30 pm: part of the allied van escaped south-south-west after failing to rescue Bucentaure and Santissima Trinidad; the rest of the van and survivors from the rear escaped to Cadiz.

This battle must be considered as an exception to the actions hitherto engaged on account of the manner in which the enemy attacked; it was a concourse of individual engagements over a small area. VILLENEUVE'S CHIEF-OF-STAFF, COMMANDER J-BPRIGNY, 1805.

 

COMBATANTS

British

• Total crews 21,456men: 18,134 seamen, 3,322 marines: 3-decker 'first rates': 3 x100 guns ...

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March 10, 1783 - USS Alliance (CAPT John Barry) defeats HMS Sybil in final naval action of Revolution in West Indies waters

 

At the end of a largely uneventful passage, she anchored off Saint-Pierre, Martinique, on 8 January 1783. There Barry found orders to sail to Havana to pick up a large quantity of gold and to deliver it to Congress at Philadelphia. After brief repairs, Alliance resumed her voyage on the 13th, touched at St. Eustatius and Cape Francois, and reached Havana on the last day of January.

 

However, another American warship, USS Duc de Lauzun, was already in port on the same mission. The specie had already been loaded on that ship, and Barry decided to escort her home. The inevitable delays kept both ships in port until 6 March. The next day, they encountered two Royal Navy frigates which gave chase. Barry chose not to fight these warships ...

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Capt. John Barry

Continental naval officer. Ireland. Born in County Wexford, Ireland, perhaps in 1745, John Barry went to sea at an early age, settling in Philadelphia around 1760. Over the next decade he became a prosperous shipmaster and owner. Congress gave Barry command of the brig Lexington on 14 March 1776. After a brisk fight on 17 April 1776, Barry captured the British sloop Edward, winning the U.S. navy’s first battle. Barry won further victories in 1776, seizing two more British ships in separate encounters and driving off a British attack off Cape May. Congress then awarded him command of the freshly built, thirty-two gun Effingham. While his ship was confined to the dock by a lack of supplies, Barry volunteered his services to General George Washington, taking cannon off of the Effingham for use as an artillery company in the battles of Trenton and Princeton. He ...

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During the months after the Treaty of Amiens, Napoleon moved aggressively to cement France’s control over the states along its borders. Although this did not violate the Peace of Amiens, the British grew alarmed. They also were alarmed by France’s protectionist trade policies, its actions in St. Domingue, and perhaps most of all by its hints that it might again invade Egypt. What precipitated war, however, was the strategically vital island of Malta, which the British had promised to return to the Knights of Malta. The British regretted their promise, and fearing the French would capture the island again, they refused to comply with the terms of the Treaty of Amiens. Napoleon considered this a provocation that he could not accept without showing weakness. In May 1803, barely a year after the signing of the formal peace, a new war began. Napoleon had not expected a lengthy peace ...

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British Gunboats capture French corvette l'Outaouaise during the Battle of the Thousand Islands. The captured ship was renamed HMS Williamson.

 

Both British and French embarked on a shipbuilding race, but up until 1760 the vessels saw little action and were employed primarily for transportation and dispatch. Some writers have claimed that the French built the Montcalm and the Huron at Fort Frontenac in 1756, but it appears certain that the new ships added to the French fleet were indeed the captured British vessels. However, several gunboats fitted with lugsails and sweeps were constructed there.

 

In 1758, Lieutenant-Colonel John Broadstreet was directed to raise a force of sailors, soldiers and landsmen in New England and to raid Fort Frontenac. By August 22, they had built sufficient whaleboats and bateaux. With their allies, the Oneida First Nation, they coasted along the south shore, crossed the lake at night and avoided detection ...

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LEGEND OF THE LAKE - New Discovery Edition Book

 

Governor William Shirley of Massachusetts receives credit for starting British shipbuilding on the lakes in order to compete with the French fur trade, and to protect the British settlements from the French and their Indian allies. He ordered the building of several ships of war at Choueguen (now Oswego, New York) in 1754 and brought in artificers from New York and Boston. Initially, all of the supplies and equipment were carried overland from the same towns, in spite of almost constant attacks and harassment by both the French and the Natives. The route, at first, was through the wilderness, up the Hudson, over the Mohawk trail, Lake Oneida and Carrying Place to the post at Oswego. Later, a stores depot was established at Schenectady, the upper navigable limit of the Hudson River.

 

In spite of horrendous difficulties, when Shirley arrived at Oswego ...

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The French fleet of 1757 as depicted by Captain Pierre Bouchard de la Broquerie. The ships are (from left to right) La Marquise de Vaudreuil, La Hurault, La Louise and Le Victor.

 

In 1685, La Barre, Frontenac's successor, had a barque built at Cataraqui, which was named Le General Little is known of her, other than she plied Lake Ontario for several years and made three trips to Niagara in 1688. There is some doubt as to whether Le General was a new vessel or one of La Salle's four earlier ships that had been rebuilt. Later, a fleet of flat-bottomed transports were added. Although these were hardly sailing ships, they did carry four-cornered lugsails. In 1687, the French launched a major attack against the Iroquois using the ships already mentioned and 198 such transports.

 

The French abandoned Fort Frontenac in 1688, and burned two of their ships ...

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CSS Alabama

The end of the period of the sailing men-of-war was not suddenly apparent,” noted the maritime historian Howard I. Chapelle, “nor was it marked by a dramatic flourish.” During the three decades after the wars of the French Revolution and Empire, the refinement of the sailing warship continued, reaching its apogee in the late 1840s. Except for their rounded sterns, the new ships looked much like their predecessors, although they were larger, more strongly built, and more heavily armed. But as designers, shipwrights, and carpenters crafted ships that were veritable works of art, the products of the technicians of the industrial revolution slowly penetrated the “wooden world.” Even as Lord Nelson stood watch off Toulon and Cadiz, steam-powered boats plied some of the major rivers of England and America, while men such as Robert Fulton envisioned steam-powered men-of-war. During the War of 1812 the Americans began construction on ...

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1784 portrait by James Northcote

British admiral. Born 12 December 1724, Samuel Hood entered the navy in 1741 as captain’s servant on the Romney (50 guns). In 1743 he joined the Garland (24), and he became midshipman on the Sheerness (24) that November. After service in other ships, he was promoted to lieutenant on the Winchelsea (20) in 1746. Hood was on half-pay from November 1748 until appointed to the Invincible (74) in 1753. In 1754 Hood took command of the Jamaica (10) in the North American station.

 

In 1756 Hood was posted captain and appointed to the Grafton (70) and returned to England. He was appointed to the Biddeford (20) in 1757 and Vestal (32) in 1758, serving in the blockade of France. The Vestal took Bellona (32) off Cape Finisterrre in 1759 and served in the Mediterranean during 1760–1763. In 1763 Hood was appointed to the ...

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The Anglo-Spanish fleet entering Toulon, 1793.

Major British naval action during the French Revolutionary Wars. In the Mediterranean theater, Vice Admiral Lord Alexander Hood commanded 21 ships of the line, including the 100-rates Victory and Britannia. Opposing him at Toulon, French Rear Admiral the Comte de Trogoff had 58 warships comprising nearly half of the French navy. Seventeen of these were ships of the line ready for sea, including the 120-gun Commerce de Marseille. Trogoff had another four ships of the line that were refitting, and nine that were undergoing repairs.

 

In August 1793 Hood was able to take advantage of royalist reaction in southern France against the radicalism of Paris. In July Toulon had overthrown its Jacobin government and declared for the monarchy. When Paris dispatched troops, Toulon’s counterrevolutionary leaders invited in Hood. Accompanied by a Spanish squadron of 17 ships of the line under Admiral Don Juan ...

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